The Perfect Storm Inspires Ideas

Recently, while watching an episode of Deadliest Catch (one of about three television series I follow anymore), I had a bit of a surprise in terms of the introduction of a new crew member to the show. 

It was a lengthy introduction and for good reason.

The new crew member was Linda Greenlaw. THE Linda Greenlaw. If you don't know who she is, and you ever saw the motion picture The Perfect Storm with George Clooney as the captain of a swordfishing boat, Andrea Gail, out of Gloucester, Massachussetts, that's the Linda Greenlaw I'm talking about. It was based on a true story about real people. And Linda Greenlaw was -- and still is -- one of those real people. The captain of the Andrea Gail's sister ship, the Hannah Boden. 

(theatrical release poster)

And that Linda Greenlaw had just joined the crew of one of the Deadliest Catch king crab fishing boats. She had somehow acquired a quota of crab and was looking for a boat to partner with. After some trial and error, including running into an old nemesis from her Hannah Boden days, she found a spot. 

In relating her backstory, they included some footage of Greenlaw talking about her life and about surviving the "perfect storm" (what they had always referred to as the 1991 "storm of the century") and how it had impacted her life. 

The motion picture had been based on a novel by Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea. There were a few things I gleaned from her story that spoke to Hollywood's version of the "true" story, such as the suggested romance between Captain Linda Greenlaw (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and Captain Billy Tynes (George Clooney) of the starcrossed swordboat, Andrea Gail. 

Apparently, they were never a "thing." Greenlaw related that they did work for the same man, and they occasionally shared info about the location of fish, but there was no tearful scene with Linda speaking at the Andrea Gail crew's memorial service. "I wasn't there. I was out fishing," Linda related. 

But that's not to say the disaster didn't impact her and her life. The owner of her boat did send her out to the last known location of the Andrea Gail, where they found a floating barrel with "A.G." painted on the side--debris from the lost ship. (Ironically, Mark Wahlberg's character, Bobby, is first viewed in the film standing on the bow of the Andrea Gail with several barrels marked "A.G." around him.) There was also a scene where a deceased member of Greenlaw's crew is carried off her vessel. That may have been based, in part, on a story she recanted on The Deadliest Catch of losing a crewmember. 

Here's an opening clip from the movie which highlights the Andrea Gail and Hannah Boden vessels and captains returning from the sea. Some of the elements I just mentioned above are included, but it's score only -- no dialogue. 

But what intrigued me the most was that I learned via her introduction and back story that Linda Greenlaw was also an author, and quite a successful one, apparently. 

A quick search on Amazon revealed quite a list of both fiction and non-fiction books, including The Hungry Ocean, The Lobster Chronicles, All Fishermen are Liars, Seaworthy, four books in The Jane Bunker Mystery series including Slipknot, Fishermen's Bend, Shiver Hitch and Bimini Twist, the non-fiction Lifesaving Lessons: Notes from an Accidental Mother and two cookbooks, Recipes from a Very Small Island and The Maine Summers Cookbook. Her books rank between four and five stars on Amazon, with at least one earning more than 500 reviews, and she was a New York Times bestseller, which seems to indicate she is quite a talent as a writer and has a few things to say that a lot of readers were interested to read about.  

It occurred to me, an author who writes many stories centered on small crews on starships, that her work might have a few inspiring ideas and "small ship environment" tidbits to lend to my work. (Wish I'd found her work a decade ago.)

So although I don't tend to read a lot outside my preferred genre, I'm going to give her books a try starting with The Hungry Ocean: The Captain's Story and Seaworthy: A Swordboat Captain Returns to the Sea. If those are inspiring, I'll read on. 

I'll post a follow-up here on The Firebird at some point in the future.

Laurie

Juggernaut has Docked at the SFR Station!

Juggernaut has now been added to the SFR Station. 

You can find all my current books as well as many other great Science Fiction Romance reads on the SFR Station by clicking the bold "Juggernaut" link below. 

(No more searching on Amazon or other book sellers for hours. The SFR Station has the lion's share of SFR books available just one click away.)

Juggernaut

Catching Up (or Where the Heck Have I Been?)

So sorry I've been quiet these past weeks. We have a lot going on in our lives (mostly good, but at times a bit of a drain on my time). No big news in my author's life at the moment but I am working on getting the next book "out there" in the near future (or as near as I can manage).

Courting Disaster (now officially dubbed "my problem child") is back from the first round of edits with my editor - on this version -  and still has some work ahead. The base story was originally released in the second Pets in Space volume back in 2017, but I felt it needed a lot more work and a lot more words before being published as a separate book. 

It's gotten both. It's about 30% longer and will probably earn the title of my "Most Edited Book" by the time I'm done. Meanwhile, the cover--which has been completed for about four years -- stands by ready for duty. :)

The reason I'm being so "perfectionist" with this book (moreso than usual) is that this story will set up the next novel, which will close out this timeline in the Inherited Stars Series. 

Not to worry, there are many more stories to come -- prequels and sequels and companion stories alike! (Now just to get them all written!)

In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing some excerpts and working on some graphics that I'll post here on The Firebird. They've been very popular in the past.

Meanwhile, have you read The Shell and the Star on this blog?  It's an aquatic Space Adventure Romance that takes place in the far future of the Inherited Stars Series. One thing it shares in common with Courting Disaster is Talstar Station. Readers might be surprised to find out that Talstar -- former HQ of the Carduwan Fifth Fleet and the Universal Flight Academy -- is still around in 50,000 years! 

Click here to start reading The Shell and the Star.

 

I'll post more soon. (Promise!)

Hey, while you're here, check out my new digital signature block....

Eschatology and the End of Days

Eschatology (/ˌɛskəˈtɒlədʒi/ (listen); from Ancient Greek ἔσχατος (éskhatos) 'last', and -logy) concerns expectations of the end of the present age, human history, or of the world itself. 

The end of the world -- or the End Times - is predicted by several world religions with teachings or prophesies that specific events will reach a climax and result in ultimate catastrophe. 

Believing the end of the world is imminent is known as apocalypticism, and over time this belief has been held by both members of mainstream religions and by doomsday cults.

The last few years -- and particularly in the last few months -- there's been a lot of talk and speculation about if we're approaching the end of the world as we know it. I've been doing a lot of thinking about that myself. Cue the earworm R.E.M. rock song...

 

That song was actually released in 1987, so we've been waiting for the end of the world as R.E.M. knew it for a very long time -- 36 years. Other end dates on civilization and/or the human race have certainly come and gone in those three-and-a-half decades. 

This is a blog I wrote over 11 years ago that also dealt with the subject of eschatology and the End of the World and how it intersected with my writing life (at that point, it wasn't an authorly life yet). 

I promise it's not a doom and gloom read, and it might even give you a smile.

__________________________________

Something's coming. Something BIG!

Or not.

Lately I've been living a sort of immersion scenario while I work on my third novel and reflect on the current uneasiness in our culture surrounding an upcoming date on our calendar.

Let me explain...

Living With World-Changing Prophecy

2012

We're living in a time where our world has gone edgy with expectation.

Many cultures of the past--the Mayan, the Hopi, the Chinese, and others--have all hinted that on one particular date in the future something big is going to happen. Many researchers agree they are all pointing to the same date--December 21, 2012.

12-21-12

Eleven months from now.

No one really knows exactly what will happen, only that an ancient calendar comes to an abrupt end on that particular date.

Some forecast doom and gloom in the eerily prophetic Mayan calendar--a calendar that has supposedly marked every major astronomical event for eons. Its terminus has been put forth by some to correlate to an energy surge from alignment with the galactic rift, a polar shift, intense solar flares, impact by a stray comet or errant asteroid, a direct hit from a gamma ray burst, an overdue supervolcanic eruption, shut down of the ocean conveyor and the inevitable instant ice age, or the mysterious planet X that's supposedly going to swoop in from the edges of our solar system, gallop through the orbital planes of the inner planets to collide with Earth.

Some believe it will be a change for better, for enlightenment, for the next step in human evolution.

And then there's the school of thought that nothing is going to happen at all. It's just going to be another date on the calendar.

After all, how can an ancient society predict what's going to happen in the future--long after their civilization has ceased to exist? How can they know?

There's actually a precedence for that, according to some researchers. They're studying a sudden spike in global consciousness the morning of September 11, 2001, hours before the events of that day actually occurred. They claim random event generators can predict catastrophes that are yet to happen. [Read more.] Are they quacks, or is there really a way to tap into a global consciousness and "see" events that are yet to happen? Are some people wired to tune in to the future?

Was Nostradamus a prophet who predicted the rise of Hitler and other upheavals in history, or merely a very clever creator of enigmatic words with symbolism that could be interpreted or twisted in any way to mean anything a person chooses?

The Great Prophecy of Draxis

In my work in progress, Draxis, the people of this fictional society are living with a prehistoric prophecy that might be coming true. And just like the theories surrounding 2012, many are jittery and fearful. They aren't sure if the change that's foretold will result in annihilation, or glorious evolution...or if anything will happen at all.

The Great Prophecy was written by a philosopher-visionary named Hamaden Sarcassius sometime around 9,000 BC by our time scale, the text carefully preserved for over twelve thousand years.

Who Sarcassius really was is lost to the centuries. Heck, maybe he was a mad. Or maybe he had ulterior motives for penning his prophecy. Or maybe--just maybe--he had the gift of vision and sent a dire warning to his race across a great expanse of time that something was coming--something the Draxians needed to prepare for.

The events of the Great Prophecy center around a person identified only as "the Flame," who according to the scripts will make a single decision that will destroy or "turn" their world.

The novel opens as the one who many believe may be "the Flame" wakes up on Draxis after being abducted, drugged and hurled through space and time to be thrust into this maelstrom of fear and fanaticism spurred by her arrival.

The parallels between the Draxian empire and our present day culture are easily drawn. Two societies living with the fear, apprehension, skepticism and denial surrounding a world-changing prophecy and the potential Armageddon it portends. Or doesn't.

No one on Draxis really knows what the words of Sarcassius mean.

And no one on Earth really knows what the end of the Mayan calendar indicates.

We live in interesting times.

Write what you know.